1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed in general to computer diagnostics system, and more particularly, to an apparatus and a method for creating and deleting a partition on a data storage device with the diagnostic system.
2. Description of the Related Art
The continual reduction in size and cost of personal computers has been instrumental in the rapid acceptance of computer technology by corporations and consumers. Even with ultra large scale integration technology, which reduces the number of components in personal computers, these personal computers are still highly complex hardware assemblies. Thus, even computers assembled using high quality components and careful assembly procedures are still subject to occasional manufacturing defects and failures during use.
The costs associated with such defects and failures in terms of manufacturer warranty obligations and end user down time are relatively high. Thus, users are demanding that their computer be reliable and be available at virtually any time. Computers, however, can experience problems associated with any one of their major components, such as the hard drive, the display, the memory, and the processor. It is important, therefore, to provide a diagnostic capability for the computer system that can test the operation of the computer in a multi-tasking environment to closely simulate the actual environment that the computer system operates in.
To satisfy such requirements, prior to the delivery of the computers to end users following the manufacture or subsequent repair, the computer circuit boards are normally subjected to functional tests to determine whether they operate properly. Furthermore, during use, the user may experience problems relating to either hardware problems or improper software configurations. To isolate the fault, the user may wish to subject his or her computer system to the functional tests to satisfy the user that the hardware or driver level software is not the culprit of the problems.
One type of diagnostic program is embedded into a non-volatile memory of the computer. In an IBM compatible personal computer, the test is called "Power On Self Test" (POST) and is arranged in personal computers as a portion of the basic input/output system (BIOS). Such BIOS-POST diagnostic program is executed automatically and mandatorily when the computer system boots. One problem that occurs with the placement of test codes in the BIOS-POST diagnostic program is the execution speed and the size of the actual code. First, users do not want to wait for an extensive diagnostic testing during each boot. Therefore, the POST-diagnostics routines cannot be as sophisticated and as thorough as possible. Furthermore, the POST diagnostics routine is constrained by tight memory requirements, and therefore is limited to simple and time-efficient tests without an easy to use graphical user interface inherently present in the Windows interface.
Another functional testing method employs specialized diagnostics software which is transferred to the computer system under test via one or more disks. The testing software is typically loaded onto the computer to be tested and a technician or a user initiates the execution of the software for testing the computer. The diagnostic software is designed to test the operation and interconnection of the circuit board components and other hardware, and to provide graphic displays on the monitor indicating the nature of any identified faults. Diagnostic software of this type is commercially available for most computer system manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers. Additionally, after-market diagnostic software is also commercially available from independent software vendors.
One disadvantage caused by disk-based test or diagnostics tools is the need to completely remove the test software from the data storage device upon completion of such test. Traditionally, such removal entails the execution of an uninstall software which ensures that various Windows files relating to the test software are removed that the Windows INI file is properly updated. The execution of such uninstall software in a production environment is undesirable due to the time and expense associated with executing and monitoring the uninstall software. Further, the user's Windows INI files may become corrupted during the uninstall process. Thus, it is desirable to install the disk operating system as well as the test software on the target computer at once and quickly and completely reclaim the space taken by the disk-based diagnostics routines after the completion of the factory tests.
One alternative to storing diagnostics software in the user's partition is to store the software in a system partition. The system partition needs to be small to minimize the usurpation of disk space from user applications. As prior diagnostics software required less than 20 megabytes, the system partition can be kept at a manageable size. However, with the advent of graphically orientated operating systems such as Windows 95, a partition with a minimum size of 25 megabytes or greater could be needed for diagnostic software during the manufacturing phase. Due to the size and the number of operating system files required to start the operating system and the size and number of files required to run modern diagnostic software, traditional provisions on the disk drive's system partition are insufficient to load the diagnostic software. However, the setup of a larger system partition would deprive the user of much needed disk drive space after diagnostics has been executing in the manufacturing phase. Thus, what is needed is an apparatus and a method for minimizing the amount of disk space ultimately lost to manufacturing diagnostics files.